Because the population of today's schools is so multicultural, teachers may find a variety of religious beliefs represented in their classrooms, from Islam, Judaism, and Christianity to Jehovah's Witnesses, Hinduism, atheism, and many others. All of which makes the season of December a little tricky to navigate, even when one is teaching "the…

After the oft-repeated three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) comes the lesser-known but equally important fourth R: rot. In this case, rot means compost. Classrooms, schools, and school districts can use a number of methods to establish a compost program. The finished product is a valuable soil amendment that adds fertility to local farmland, school…

Transporting students with special needs can be a costly proposition. However, school business officials can help mitigate those costs by focusing on four specific areas: relationships, information sharing, safety, and time lines. Although these areas may seem a bit far removed from the numbers we love to crunch, they do affect your…

Qualitative data offer advantages to evaluators, including rich information about stakeholders' perspectives and experiences. However, qualitative data analysis is labor-intensive and slow, conflicting with evaluators' needs to provide punctual feedback to their clients. In this method note, we contribute to the literature on rapid evaluation and…

When it comes to project management, the IT department is typically its own worst enemy. When project requests are pushed through the budgeting process by different departments, it's up to IT to make them all work. The staff is required to be "heroic" to get the project load done. People get to work over weekends and postpone their vacations. The…

During these hard economic times, Heads of Department (HoDs) need to find cost effective ways of providing CPD for their staff. An astute department or subject leader will want to be adept at creating the right opportunities for professional learning for their staff with a minimum of expenditure. This article provides ideas on how to find cost…

In this paper, a model and tool is proposed to assist universities and other mission-based organisations to ascertain systematically the optimal portfolio of projects, in any year, meeting the organisations risk tolerances and available funds. The model and tool presented build on previous work on university operations and decision support systems…

Consistency in the title, problem, purpose, and research question improve the logic and transparency of research. When these components of research are aligned research design and planning are more coherent and research reports are more readable. This article reviews the process for checking for and improving consistency. Numerous examples of…

Planning for policy implementation is as important as the implementation itself. A policy's intent can be subverted by the way the policy is implemented, or when unanticipated outcomes take precedence over the true intent. This article presents three cases of specific instances of unintended outcomes from policy implementation and presents a…

Most undergraduate business students simply do not appreciate the elegant mathematical beauty of inventory models. So how does an instructor capture students' interest and keep them engaged in the learning process when teaching inventory management concepts? This paper describes a competitive and energizing in-class simulation game that introduces…

One of the toughest battles a music teacher can fight is the battle to stay organized. Getting organized--and staying that way--is no easy task for a busy music educator. However, for the sake of music teachers' success in the classroom, and for their sanity, organization is crucial. The author has spoken with several educators about how they keep…

We share an example of how we organize our undergraduate research projects.

This article offers a critical discussion of the role of the business plan in current enterprise educational practice. In addition to reviewing recent work that considers the "for" and "against" arguments about the use of business plans in higher education, the authors suggest that the context of student learning is largely…

The traditional delivery system for public K-12 education in the U.S. is being disrupted by forces from without (e.g., forms of competition, including charter schools) and from within (e.g., new regulatory requirements, including meaningful teacher evaluation and the Common Core). As in any sizable sector of the economy, challenges to the status…

Drawing on the author's experience as director of a long-lived school-university partnership, this essay describes how one such organization can "do it right" and enhance the development of teacher leadership in schools. It also provides a cautionary tale about how that same organization can "do it wrong" and achieve the…